FRUSTRATION

FRUSTRATION


ONLY YESTERDAY did he celebrate his fifteenth birthday with the wild fun and excitement of an orgiastic feast galore; friends and relatives trooping in with generous presents, bathing him with words and gestures of rare benedictions- inundating affectionate embraces, his name the song on the lips of all and sundry to whom rounds of servings from delectable delicacies were doled out according to their reasonable or unreasonable requests and fancy; words of advice and inspiration flew to his ears from all sides, boosting his pride and increasing his zest for life. The occasion of the fifteenth birthday of a child is regarded as a very significant one that deserves wild merry-making.

This morning, still basking in the impressive aftertaste of the party, Stephen leaves home for school, enormously jaunty and light-hearted. There was no mistaken how pleasantly excited he must have been as he saunters along self-assuredly in the brightness of the sunny early morning. Humming a cheery tune, he obviously hopes for the best.

But after a kilometre into his journey, he espies a group of his schoolmates approaching him. Very strange this is for a Monday morning. Shocked, Stephen stops short and observes the dreary countenances of the now conspicuous students who turned out to be a set of his intimate friends- yesterday merry invitees to his birthday party now standing bereaved of all cheerfulness:

“Look here! Pay up your arrears within twenty-four hours or risk rustication,” uttered one of them to Stephen, with a cold aloofness strikingly contrasting his yesterday’s rambunctiousness.

“The principal is bent on throwing out all aged debtors,” said another in the same gloomy vein.

“You’d better retreat,” another urged him, “You know how notorious a pair you and I are-two-years debtors have been beating a retreat; they are sure to be humiliated by every teacher that comes into class for their lesson.”

“ I saw Mr. Okon flogging some students away to their parents’ homes!” the fourth boy intimates with a sadistic smile.

Speechless, Stephen darts a searching look at his friends and finds only gloom and hopelessness that absolutely contrast with the warmth one would expect. Without uttering a word, he turns back and homewards he starts shambling.

“What a hell! Daddy has travelled and won’t be back in a fortnight; mummy- dead broke…PAY UP my school fees!”

He drags himself on in oblivious disconsolation, his face fixed on the ground -sane or not, it is difficult to tell as he mumbles to himself confused incomprehensibilities that attracted quixotic stares and looks from wondering passers-by.

Several minutes later, he collects himself and hastens to the nearest telephone exchange to relay the shock to his father: Stephen owes a salary! His father goes all to pieces. Utterly bewildered! He bawls, bellows, shrieks and screeches-this least expected ultimatum! -his hands quavering with confusion.


Finally, his excited speech subsides and he promises doing all that lies in his powers to secure the amount for Stephen and to send it on to him: “Unfailingly,” he assured the boy, “ through my messenger who should be with you four o’clock at the very latest.”

Stephen is elated. The gloomy anticlimax has given way to light and hope. But this is and remains but a promise, only the fulfillment will appease Stephen completely. Now rolls in the episode of hopeful awaiting which begins at about half past eight o’clock.

Half an hour later, he arrives home and relates his plight to his mother. His mother, a long bankrupt businesswoman whose hope for recovery dwindles by the day. But too intoxicated with optimism to read or hear his mother’s reaction, he hurries to the kitchen, gets something down to his stomach, and dosses down wearily in a sofa.

With this, he has merely joined his mother who, dazedly dumbfounded by the shocking news, has taken to the soft option of “Refuge in the Arms of Morpheus.”

Stephen wakens three hours later. All around him is the darkness of heavy clouds, portents of torrential rain. Howls of winds and rumbles of thunder have reached their climax .The heavens open and release a fierce rain that persisted for all of three and half hours. The darkness had repressed his reviving spirits, the cold weather now dampens his cheers, and the ceaselessly ranting torrential rain drumming intrusively on the rooftop did not uplift him but appeared like an imprisoning that shackled his thinking processes, rendering him physically and mentally inertial, cramped. Over his soul has gathered another mass of clouds, clouds of dark despondency.

“ It is already 3:30; I am yet to see even a trace of the one dad promised.”

Anxiety pervades his countenance; restlessly, he paces up and down in the living room, abstractedly bumping his feet against pieces of furniture and getting all the more turned off. Now he has waxed a little queer, for the least budge and sound of everything sits him up- the crawl of a wall gecko or the nod of a lizard; every human movement, save his mother’s, drives him to peep through the window: his mother’s stirrings consist of snores of inflexible slumber and hisses of an unresolved dismay now and then punctuating her peaceful sleep.

Such sounds of passing vehicles as he hears make his heart sink on every occasion. Finally, tired of all the fruitless fussing and excitement, he resolves to sit; he plumps himself down dejectedly into an armchair and fixes his gaze on the windows, glassy, expressionless eyes of bored dejectedness.


Few minutes later, the rain resumes, but this time falling so mildly as to enable Stephen hear the sounds of passing vehicles outside. With each approach of a vehicle, his anxiety mounts and mounts, until it reaches an acme: It reaches the acme when a lorry mistakenly comes right to the verandah of his house, the driver thinking it was his destination.

“If none of the next three vehicles turns out to be the man, I will UNLEARN the matter-BLOODY rigmarole!”

A little later, there comes the first vehicle booming directly towards his house with urgent speed, his house its possible destination. Stephen leaps up immediately, his eyes gleaming with excitement. But, on reaching the crossroads across from the house, it deviates leftwards. It is destined for the last building in Stephen’s street. Sharply irked with this passing farce, he bashes the wall, hisses, then returns to his couch.

The second vehicle gives him very little hope, though as its sound approaches his hearing it stands him up and makes him reach for the window. But suddenly, it accelerates right along the road before the house.

.“Go then to the blazes! GHASTLY goof!” He bangs the door.

None other vehicle approaches for some time. Bleary-eyed, with an awfully sinister gaze, Stephen regards the picture of his father hanging on the wall facing him; with a crucifying reproachfulness, urgent enough in its horridity .He gazes at it on and on with formidable ferocity, as a fiery dog would an unmistakable intruder.

Suddenly, the drizzle develops into a raging downpour, and continues unabated for all of twenty minutes. Dreadful thoughts of being expelled assails Stephen; and while considering the thought of waking his mother and venting on her with a nasty harangue, the vile disappointment caused by her husband, the rain abruptly lets up. Then, almost immediately, there comes a large truck hurrying towards his house, as did the first vehicle. He is unmoved and stays glued to his couch in proud defiance of his anxious thoughts. But this lorry draws up in front of the house. Stephen leaps up!

He recalls that the truck looks very much like one of the official trucks of his father’s office.

“ Perhaps this is Mr. Samson at last!”

He observes there are two men in the vehicle, a young man with an unfamiliar profile, and another whose head is obscured in the darkness of the truck. The young, unknown man alights, holding an envelope and striding earnestly towards the house:

“Heavens! Here it comes at last, it just must be! Must be!” He howls and holloes; he leaps towards the ceiling and brushes it with a enraptured fist (Unimpressed by his hollo, his mother simply carries on in the arms of Morpheus-an act of escapism, this seems, out a reality of a certain undeniable hopelessness.)

Unfortunately, the man is on errand and merely comes to ask from Stephen the direction to some unknown spot.

“ Now 4:30p.m! The extent of my patience! Definitely, Old man has let me down… Bah! Ugh! Ugh!”

He ponders…

“O.K. Telegram! Yeah! Telegram! He must have a feel of my chagrin! Telegram! Yeah!”

He flounces out of the sitting room and hurries to the nearest telegraphist. Feverishly, he trots along, strides and strides, muttering non-stop especially bitter utterances.

After summarizing and re-summarizing his message according to his flat purse, his telegraph reads:

“Father, Frustrate me no further or be thou Frustrated; Time-4:45p.m; I risk RUSTICATION!!!”

A little later, his father replies. His telegraph reads:

“Lad, Exasperate me no further, or be thou Exasperated; Time-4:50p.m; I risk losing MY JOB!!!”


GIWA OLUMAKINWA O.